


Where Love Grows Free and Wild

by deeyosa, lily_winterwood



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Dacha, Flower Crowns, Fluff, Illustrated, M/M, Russian Culture, Soft Victor Nikiforov, Soft Victor Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 04:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14762984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deeyosa/pseuds/deeyosa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_winterwood/pseuds/lily_winterwood
Summary: A country picnic with Yuuri takes Viktor down memory lane to his own childhood excursions out to the family dacha.A piece forKamome: A Soft Viktor Zine, done in collaboration withDeeyosa.





	Where Love Grows Free and Wild

Summers in Japan are hot and sticky, full of the buzzing of cicadas in the trees, and only the faintest of breezes to relieve the thick humidity in the air. As someone used to the colder, crisper summers of Saint Petersburg, Viktor Nikiforov is positively _dying_.

“How much longer?” he calls, as Yuuri pedals on ahead of him. The sweat is sticking to him, and his throat feels scratchier than sandpaper. But Yuuri only tosses an ‘almost there!’ over his shoulder and continues on pedalling down this long country road along expansive stretches of farmland, with only the occasional car on the road or bird on the telephone lines for company.

Yuuri had said they were ‘almost there’ for the past half an hour. Or at least to Viktor’s heat-addled brain, that’s what it feels like. But after a while, Yuuri finally does turn off the road and down a small dirt path into a forested area, and Viktor quickly follows, with the sound of bugs loud around his ears. Somewhere in the distance there’s the sound of water running.

The dirt path leads out to a field cut through by a small creek, babbling bright and clear through the tall grasses and bursts of wildflowers. Yuuri leans his bike against one of the trees and grabs the picnic basket, heading out towards a shady spot out beneath the branches of the tree but also by the banks of the creek.

Viktor helps him spread the blanket and the food. Hiroko had packed them both bentos for their lunch, as well as a flask of watermelon juice which Yuuri pours into two small plastic cups. He hands one to Viktor, brown eyes sparkling like the sunlight on the creek, and Viktor’s heart overflows like the cup in his hands.

“Kampai,” Yuuri says, a little jokingly, and Viktor grins as he bumps his cup against Yuuri’s. The watermelon juice is cool and sweet against his tongue.

It’s not much of an afternoon for chatting; the thick summer heat makes all of Viktor’s movements needlessly sluggish, and talking consequently feels like too much effort. But Yuuri seems to understand, too; he leans in quietly against Viktor as they eat, his silence companionable and sweet. They’ve long lost the need to express their contentment in words, but the longing for more of Yuuri — for all of him, as much as he can give — suffuses through Viktor’s veins with each point of contact between their bodies.

He has never wanted something as badly as he wants Yuuri.

(He has never wanted some _one_ as wholly as he wants Yuuri, too.)

Yuuri puts a hand on his shoulder once his bento is empty. “Be right back,” he offers, and gets up from the blanket. Viktor watches, in between bites of his lunch and sips of his juice, Yuuri moving through the field below, gathering sprays of wildflowers into his arms. For a moment Viktor could almost paint him as a bucolic farm girl in an Impressionist painting, especially with the flowers gathered into his arms like brightly-coloured wheat.

He’s suddenly reminded of himself, standing at the top of the podium at just sixteen with flowers in his hair and his arms. It took ten more years since that triumphant moment to realise that winning isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Ten years to find a love that makes his life so much brighter, a life that makes his love all the stronger.

Yuuri settles back down onto the blanket with the flowers, now, laying them out across his lap with a contemplative gleam in his eyes. “It’s been a while since I last did this,” he says, and Viktor raises an eyebrow.

“Did what?” he asks.

“Make a flower crown,” replies Yuuri as he starts to weave the blooms together, his slender fingers skillfully dancing along their stems. The scent of the flowers tickles at something in Viktor’s memory; closing his eyes for a moment, he remembers the heady sweetness of the flowers blooming in the garden of the family dacha in the Saint Petersburg countryside.

He had brought only Makkachin along with him the last time he went out to the dacha; at the time he had been so proud of himself for being able to take himself all the way out there like that. Armed with only a couple books and a picnic, Viktor had wanted to spend his afternoon catching up on his school readings.

The instant he arrived at the family dacha, however, all thoughts of schoolwork had flown out of his head. Out in the garden amid the proud stalks of sunflowers and smaller clusters of other flowers like multicoloured stars, Viktor had quickly discarded his original plans in favour of gathering bright and fragrant blossoms into his arms.

“It’s been a while for me, too,” he says quietly, stirred back into the present when Yuuri taps his shoulder. As Yuuri holds up some flowers to the side of his head, Viktor stills, watching the other man determine whether irises or daisies would look better against his hair. After a moment, Yuuri settles for irises, and continues to weave the garland.

“I always feel a little bad for these flowers,” he admits. “I picked them, so now they’re all dead, and in a couple days that’s going to be obvious.”

“At least they died for art,” Viktor jokes. Yuuri laughs at that, weaving a couple anemones in among the others.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he wonders, as he holds up his current braid of flowers to Viktor’s hair, his expression thoughtful. Viktor’s breath falls short as he sits, quietly counting the freckles dotting Yuuri’s nose, the flecks of gold in his eyes.

If he could go back in time to his younger self, he wonders what that Viktor would say to this moment, this afternoon out in the Japanese countryside with Yuuri so close and yet so far. He tries to concentrate on his food, on the texture of the rice and the sweetness of the tamago, but his eyes invariably get drawn back to how Yuuri works with his tongue poking out between his teeth and that concentrated gleam in his eyes that Viktor usually only sees on the ice.

Would a younger version of him love Yuuri as much as he loves him now? He knows his younger self might appreciate the leap of faith he took, but maybe his patience wouldn’t have been as enduring.

He thinks back to that afternoon at the dacha again. Though he had managed to make matching crowns for himself and Makkachin, his patience had waned halfway through the third. So he’d tied off the flowers around Makkachin’s paw, before lying down on the grass with the rest of the daisies and a puff of dandelion like a small cloud on a stem.

“Makka, do you ever wonder what would happen if I joined the circus instead?” he asked. “Just run away from all of this, skate in a travelling ice show. I could eat whatever I like and not have to worry about competitions and all of that. No judges, no parents, no Yakov…”

Makkachin wagged his tail, lying down next to Viktor on the grass and snuffling curiously at the daisies. Viktor blew the dandelion fluff into the wind, giggling when Makkachin sneezed in response to one of the seeds tickling at his nose. Looking up at the passing white clouds, Viktor had thought vaguely about how nice it’d be to listen to more than just the blowing of the wind and the sound of his own voice.

“Do you think I’ll ever find someone, Makka?” he wondered, looking over at the poodle who merely wagged his tail again in response. “I mean it’s not weird, right? That I go skating instead of trying to ask classmates out on dates and stuff. Would you want me to bring someone over for you to meet?”

Makkachin had said nothing to that, but Viktor knows _now_ that Makkachin had, in fact, been excited to meet Yuuri. A loyal old poodle like him never quite got used to Viktor rarely being around, especially as the competitions and shows grew more frequent and the sponsorship meetings stacked up.

Yuuri smiles at him now, holding up a much longer flower chain. He ties it into a circle, carefully tucking in the ends, and then reaches forward. Viktor bows his head, letting Yuuri crown him with his traitorous heart fluttering wildly in his chest.

Yuuri’s hands flit down to cover Viktor’s, and that’s when Viktor sees a small red beetle settle on the back of Yuuri’s hand. “Wait,” he breathes, as Yuuri tries to slide his hands away. He holds on, looking up at Yuuri with a smile. “There’s a ladybug on your hand.”

Yuuri’s gaze flickers down, a small smile tugging at his lips. “It’s cute,” he remarks. Viktor holds on tighter, savouring the warmth of Yuuri’s fingers in his.

“In Russia, if a ladybug lands on you, you have to sing a song, and if it flies away once you’re finished, it means your wish will come true,” he says.

“What do you usually sing about?” Yuuri asks. Viktor begins to hum the song, trying to remember the lyrics from his childhood.

There had been several ladybugs crawling on his mother’s tomato plants that afternoon, and one of them landed on his arm as he wove his flower garland. Viktor froze when he felt the bug against his skin, and began to sing.

His voice floated out into the blue, among the clouds. He only sang the first half, mostly because he forgot the second. But the ladybug had taken flight as soon as he finished, returning to nestle amid the leaves of the tomato plants.

Viktor hadn’t know what to wish for immediately after that, but he had figured it out later that night. And maybe the bug has granted it to him now, with Yuuri’s hands in his and Yuuri’s inquisitive eyes blinking up at him.

Viktor never wants the moment to end.

“It’s a silly song,” he says, as the bug on Yuuri’s hand grows bored of its resting spot and flies away. “About ladybugs giving us black-and-white bread. Childhood songs are usually nonsense, though.”

“That’s why we remember them,” replies Yuuri, not pulling away as Viktor strokes at the place where the bug had been with one thumb. “Did you make a wish?”

Viktor laughs, remembering the one he’d whispered into his pillow that night when he returned from the dacha, the one that sits now in front of him in the heart of the Kyushu countryside with a bright smile on his face and his hand in Viktor’s as if they had been made to hold one another. The flower crown Yuuri made him sits lightly on his brows now, not like the weight of the blue roses, or the loneliness of the dacha flowers.

“I don’t need to,” he says, smiling. “All of my wishes have come true.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _Lift me up and lead me to the garden_  
>  _Where life begins anew_  
>  _Where I'll find you_  
>  _And I'll find you love me too._  
>  —"[Come to My Garden](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTvOS9zZb5g)" from _The Secret Garden_
> 
> This piece was illustrated by the amazing [Deeyosa](https://twitter.com/_deeyosa)! You can find the full picture [here](https://deeyosa.tumblr.com/post/174291873094/my-collab-piece-for-softviktorzine-with-the).
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://omgkatsudonplease.tumblr.com)!


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